Throwback Thursday: Olympic Games

Posted by Helen Martin on Aug 2, 2016

As the world of sport awaits the official opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio tomorrow, any talk of viruses is restricted to concerns surrounding the mosquito-borne, human-infecting Zika virus, with numerous athletes having withdrawn from the Games over infection fears and experts calling for the Games to be moved, while others have played down the risks.

22 years ago, it was a winter Olympic year, and the Games, held in Lillehammer, Norway, brought with them a virus in digital form. The Olympic virus (a.k.a. Olympic Aid) was suspected of having infected the computer systems of the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics – although fortunately this turned out not to be the case.

In March 1994, Mikko Hyppönen provided a detailed analysis of the virus for VB, looking at the Swedish virus-writing group that was behind it, and the virus operation and code.

Mikko's article can be read here in HTML-format, or downloaded here as a PDF.

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